New York (Tadias) – We would like to wish a very merry Christmas (Melkam Genna) to all our readers!

The following is an excerpt from an article entitled “How the Story of Christmas Saved Islam.” It was published on HuffingtonPost.com on Christmas day 2009. The writer shares the story of an Ethiopian Christian King and his decision to grant refuge to the family of the Prophet Mohammad, who arrived in ancient Ethiopia while fleeing from their pagan persecutors. The piece by author and Hollywood filmmaker Kamran Pasha highlights Ethiopia’s historic role in providing sanctuary for the earliest Muslims. We thought we would share it with you in celebration of Genna!

And our Christmas story begins with that first emigration, to the Christian kingdom of Abyssinia, in modern day Ethiopia.

In 615 C.E., five years after the prophet’s first vision of Gabriel, persecution of the Muslims had become a life-and-death matter. A Muslim woman named Sumaya, the first martyr of Islam, had been publicly murdered by a Meccan tribal chief. The weakest members of the community, such as the African slave Bilal, were subjected to torture. And the Arab chieftains were coming together to proclaim a ban of trade with the Muslims, prohibiting citizens of Mecca from providing food and medicine to members of the new movement.

Facing the very real possibility of extinction, a small group of Muslims led by the Prophet’s daughter Ruqayya and his son-in-law Uthman, escaped Meccan patrols and managed to get to the Red Sea, where they fled to Abyssinia by boat. They sought the protection of the Negus, the Christian king who had a reputation for justice. Read more.